


Get Out, Get Gone

by anthrop



Series: Good Intentions Deadfic Extravaganza [8]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Gen, all of my dannys have the Anxiety and you can tear that from my cold dead hands, arguably an attempt at reframing all of canon, half-ghosts: bigger on the inside, stream of consciousness-style writing, the fic where neat headcanons went to die, what if we made danny's physiology eldritch as hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:49:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27256723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthrop/pseuds/anthrop
Summary: There’s a weight to you now that wasn’t there before. You’d think with your powers—(and doesn’t it feel strange to call them that, when you shake and shiver at the sight of your bones under your meat, when you walk down the stairs and your feet don’t touch anything at all)—you’d weigh less,beless. A thing of smoke, and ectoplasm, and all that awful electricity arcing through your nerves. But that's not what happened.
Series: Good Intentions Deadfic Extravaganza [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1983268
Comments: 12
Kudos: 114
Collections: Good Intentions: Abandoned and Unfinished WIPs, final beauty





	Get Out, Get Gone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ghostfiish](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ghostfiish).



> More deadfic! This one's from ~2014, or what could arguably be called the height of Phandom activity over on Tumblr. It was inspired by the brilliant ghostfiish's art, specifically [this piece](https://ghostfiish.tumblr.com/post/78676003161/from-a-post-by-askdannyjamesfenton-that-said) playing with the headcanon that Danny and Vlad's transformation rings resembled galaxies and black holes. 
> 
> If I'm remembering correctly I used this as practice for a sort of low-stress, stream of consciousness-style of writing and boy, does it show. What this fic lacks in readability it more than makes up for in being a picture perfect insight into what untreated anxiety's like! Beware a deluge of run-on sentences roughly interrupted by yet more run-on sentences! 
> 
> Seriously though, this one petered out because I leaned into that style _too_ much and started treating this fic as a collective 'neat headcanons' pile. I eventually lost all interest in trying to backtrack into something comprehensible. I don't even remember where this one was _going_ anymore. Still, like all the other deadfics I've been posting I'm still incredibly fond of this fic. I hope some of you out there enjoy what's here too. :)
> 
> Oh, and! While we're at it, have an old [Danny playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7hHLoRGLQ9njEEhs217j3T?si=509fWf2mS0-e7S7xFiU35w) I never got around to sharing that fits the mood this fic is going for. Title comes from To Kill a King's ["Bloody Shirt (Bastille Remix),"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PMB0pFZn6s) which is unfortunately not included on the Spotify playlist.

There’s a weight to you now that wasn’t there before. You’d think with your powers—

_(and doesn’t it feel strange to call them that, when you shake and shiver at the sight of your bones under your meat, when you walk down the stairs and your feet don’t touch anything at all)_

—you’d weigh less, _be_ less. A thing of smoke, and ectoplasm, and all that awful electricity arcing through your nerves. But that's not what happened. 

You remember that day with a surreal nightmare quality, memories fuzzing and skittering like white noise in your skull. Pain and green light and being so, so certain that had been it. _Zap!_ That’s all she wrote. But it wasn't, and here you are, hovering three inches off the grass and praying no one will see, that no one will _know._

You aren’t less for all that’s changed, for all that’s changed in you. Tucker and Sam haven’t said anything about it, and it’s clear they don’t have a clue. Your first—

_(disastrous, embarrassing)_

—fight against the Lunch Lady knocked you _right_ out. They had to carry you all the way home from school after you failed to stop her. It’s a wonder nobody stopped _them,_ dragging your sorry carcass across town. If either of them had noticed, if either of them _could_ have noticed, they would have told you. Or worse, they wouldn’t have managed to get you home at all.

 _You_ noticed it when you changed. Not the first time, in the shadowed, silver throat of the Portal—

_(electricity cooking you from the inside out, the Portal writhing, burning, tearing itself into existence, a physical hole ripped so cleanly between realities even your parents don’t understand it and they built the damn framework, boiling ectoplasm splashing on you, over you, inside you, changing you forever)_

—but after. Changing back and forth without any control, cringing behind dumpsters and hedges, tossing desperate prayers skyward that nobody had seen the light, that nobody had seen you change from kid to _freak._ So much of you changes when this strange, _alien_ light stretches across you, not just your clothes and eyes and hair, no, you’re different now down to your _cells,_ down to the very structure of your DNA. You _know,_ you’ve _checked._ So much of you is different, it’s a wonder you didn’t figure it out sooner.

When you change, you’re heavier. _Heavier._ Not like ten pounds or something any normal kid might stress out over. You become the kind of heavy that leaves brushstroke smears in asphalt, reduces sturdy brick walls to dusty rubble, punches craters through solid ground. It hurts when you fall, _god_ does it hurt. But your bones never shatter. Your guts never liquefy. Your brain never dribbles out your ears. How? How can you possibly survive the beatings every new ghost is so eager to give you? 

Ah, but there's never any time to think about it though, not really. No time for anything but a raw, thready panic and clumsily scrawled homework copied five minutes before the bell. Your chance to tell your parents came and went, and now there’s always another ghost attacking the city.

Mom and Dad are so happy now. You’ve never seen them happier than this, with the stuff of your grade school nightmares on the rampage. It’s proof they aren’t crazy, proof they haven’t wasted their whole lives on a pipe dream, proof that everybody who ever called them quacks were _wrong._ Good for them, you guess. Meanwhile you’re picking yourself out of the wreckage of another storefront, glass needled all down your spine, and you can’t help but marvel at the damage your body has done. Can do. _Will_ do.

Because you’re stronger, you’re _getting_ stronger every day. The weight in you that your Sam and Tucker don’t—

_(can’t)_

—notice grows more noticeable, and after a few fights you're quicker, too. And perhaps you're changing still, perhaps the accident isn't done with you yet, because one day there’s sickly green light at your fingertips, and in no time at all you can manipulate the energy buzzing inside you—

_(the electricity and hot ectoplasm from the accident screaming through you, out from your palms and striking down the things that used to scare you as a little kid, back when door knobs and faucets were out of reach of your tiny fingers and there was so much dark in your big big house, and now your hands trail light like after images from staring at the sun too long, now you can patch your hurts up by the light of your own blood, now you're learning that you don’t need to be afraid of what hides in the dark anymore)_

—in ways you never thought possible. Sure, lots of what you do is learned the hard way, mid-battle against sizzling green things with teeth like hunting knives, running on instinct and adrenaline and terror all tangled up in your throat. Lots more is later, when it’s quiet and safe again, practicing things you’ve seen other ghosts do again and again and again until you can mimic it, improve it, make it _yours._

But no ghost you fight has the same _heaviness_ as you do. No improbable weight that defies the logical mass of their ectoplasm. If it’s big, it’s heavy. If it’s small, it’s light. Unexpected logic from creatures that defy logic in every other way. 

There’s a lesson you learn the hard way, testing the strength of these invaders against your bruised and splitting knuckles. You learn caution. You learn _restraint._ If you punch them hard enough, some ghosts, the little formless ones your parents have captured once or twice now, burst like water balloons—a hard _pop_ of searing green, an overwhelming smell-taste of citrus and hot pennies. Too much of your supernatural strength pressed into the soft hide of a monster and the end result is a glowing puddle where _someone_ used to be. 

You learn this lesson quickly. You learn that even when you’re fighting for your life, you’ve got to hold back. You _defend,_ you _protect._ Death scares you too much to risk killing—

_(is it killing when it’s already dead, where does a ghost go when it dies, is there something more to the Ghost Zone than what you’ve glimpsed with your own eyes or is that it, is that all, have you erased someone from reality forever, these are the questions that make your stomach hurt, that make it hard to breathe, that make it hard to fake a smile when Jazz asks if something’s wrong)_

—something so much like yourself. Even if it’s got teeth like hunting knives.

You think you’re an anomaly, a _freak,_ the only one stupid enough to walk into a Ghost Portal and zap yourself full of juice that by rights should have killed you—

_(and a little part of you wonders if that isn’t just what happened, if you’re just a dead thing walking around in your body, wearing it like a meatsuit and waiting for the rot to show, but it’s been a month, it’s been months, and you eat more and you sleep less, not because you don’t need it but because there’s never any time, and you’ve grown another inch and there’s new definition to your muscles, and that all must mean you’ll be okay, that you are okay, it has to)_

—until Wisconsin. Until Vlad.

He’s in the same boat as you, plus twenty years of experience and enough self-made loneliness to turn him bitter and crazy and _dangerous._ He wants Dad dead and Mom _his,_ like she’s some kind of carnival prize he can win if he throws his weight around enough. Swing the mallet, hit the bell, and congratulations! The woman you haven't spoken to in twenty years who has made her own life without you is now yours to take home! Ugh.

But _god,_ he can hit hard. Lightning, _real_ lightning, nothing like the weak little zaps of electricity inside you, rattles at his fingertips like a living thing, furious burning strikes of pain, and he knocks you aside like he’s _bored._ You have a thousand questions, but he won't give you a single answer unless you concede defeat or whatever he wants, so it looks like you’ll just have to _beat_ the answers out of him instead. Who cares if he’s got twenty years on you? He’s not out most nights pummeling wayward ghosts back into the Ghost Zone. He’s not out most days saving people from ghosts with bloodthirsty, power-hungry vendettas. What you lack for in time and experience you make up in rooftop fistfights and stolen first-aid kits. 

Sure you managed to outwit him—

_(barely, hardly at all, he just wanted to save face in front of Mom, if he hadn’t cared about that, if he’d just tried overshadowing Mom instead it all could have turned out so differently, and doesn’t that thought make it hard to sleep the first few nights back home)_

—but you can’t stop thinking of what it had been like to fight him, of what it was like to see another person do all that you can and so much _more._ You remember every second of each fight, like it’s been burned across your eyelids. You replay it all every time you blink for days, for weeks. It’s easy as thought to recall the light arcing around his waist as he’d transformed. Just like yours, and yet _nothing_ like yours. The color, sure, that had been the obvious difference. When you change it’s a white light, sharp and searing enough to leave stars in your eyes if you look at it. _His_ transformation—

_(black like cave darkness, black like a power outage, black like the vastness between stars, sucking in light like a hungry thing, like it’d swallow you whole if it had had the chance)_

—had been like a punch to the gut even before he’d buried his fist in your gut. You’d known without words, _known_ in some primitive bit of brain that still looked up at the night sky and thought _magic_ before _science,_ you had _known._ You and Vlad were made out of the same mess, but maybe, just _maybe,_ those twenty years were stacked against him.

Trouble is, the transformation is so quick you can’t make much out but the light/non-light of yours and his, and luckily—

_(unluckily?)_

—he’s all the way in Wisconsin so you don’t have many opportunities for a closer look at _his._ You ask Sam and Tucker to take pictures and videos, change back and forth so often you almost forget which side of you is which, but the quality is never good enough to see what you _know_ is there—

_(but can’t explain, not with words, even though you try for the benefit of your friends because they’re the ones there for you when everything else has gone topsy-turvy, but you’re just a kid who leaks green when dead people hit you too hard, just a kid with bad grades and a lot of questions to evade, and what you’re trying to pinpoint frame by frame is something so beyond your vocabulary you can only shrug, can only say you want to know more about your powers and hope this is one of those white lies nobody catches you in the act of)_

—so you stop.

Do you give up? No, but there are more important things to focus on. It isn’t shelving your questions so much as putting them on the backburner. There are ghosts to deal with. Ghosts that want to hurt you, ghosts that want to hurt humans, more and more ghosts with strange and terrifying abilities pouring out from the Portal all the time. Closing the Portal doesn’t slow them any, which doesn’t make any sense to you. Then again, Dad was up to his elbows in most of the Portal’s guts and wiring, so applying logic to any inch of it is pretty pointless. You’ve learned not to ask too many questions about anything with a Fenton sticker slapped on it.

You’re busy now, busy all the time, bruised and burned and even stitched up all the time. Super strength is only so good when you’re fighting things with teeth like hunting knives. But it’s whatever, it’s no big deal, really. Because you’re keeping people safe. You’re learning more about the Ghost Zone and the things that inhabit it. You’re learning more about yourself; your powers, your weaknesses, how quick you can be with a snarky quip. Yeah, your parents are aiming guns and questions at you. Yeah, teachers with red pens and detention slips are hounding after you. And yeah, you’re fourteen years old bare-knuckle fighting monsters and no one ever says thanks because they think you’re just like every other ghost out there or maybe that you’re some human-loving _freak—_

_(and when you think of your life like this, in lists of who wants answers and who wants to see you bleed, it sounds so bad, it sounds like you should be one inch away from a complete breakdown, but is it weird to say you’re happy, is it weird to say you couldn’t imagine your life any other way)_

—yet you grin through a mouthful of red-and-green and keep going. Elated? Maybe, sometimes. Scared? _Absolutely,_ sometimes. You’re just a kid with eyes that flare like headlights when somebody’s pissed you off. 

It’s only right to be scared, sometimes.

Still, it’s the _weight_ of you that keeps you grounded, keeps you _human_ when you need to be. Sit in a chair, walk across a bridge, it all makes the same creak under you as it would for Sam and Tucker. But take one of Skulker’s shoulder rockets to the face, you leave a crater in Central Park so big they decide to just turn it into another duck pond. A permanent new addition to the park, and all your face gets is a nasty bruise Dash takes the credit for. You let him, because Lancer overhears. Dash is the one getting detention for once, and there’s a nasty satisfaction to be found there.

You and Jazz share a bathroom, and she’s got a scale she keeps in the towel cupboard. Curious, you take it out one day after school and try to weigh yourself. Last time you checked, you were somewhere near 120, puberty stretching you faster than your appetite can keep up. This time, the numbers whirl past 280 pounds before the scale makes a metallic groan and _crumples_ like tissue paper under your sneakers. Sheer reflex launches you into the air, and you bounce off the ceiling with your knees hugged so tight to your chest you can hear tendons creak, your heart a thundering jackhammer in your chest. Thank god you’re home alone, because you hover there for who-knows how long, too scared the floor will crack under your illogical, _impossible_ weight, too scared you’ll plummet straight down to the hard steel of the lab if you try to stand, too scared you might plummet even further.

When you finally do scrounge up the courage to touch down, an air bubble in the old linoleum crackles under your heel and you damn near jump out of your skin. After that, all you can do is laugh and laugh until your sides _hurt._ You throw Jazz’s scale out in a dumpster a block away and never tell her what happened to it.

What does this mean? Is the weight of you _optional?_ If you think about it too hard, does it _become_ real? What about when you’re fighting, causing all that property damage the city hates you for? You’re not thinking of the strangeness of your mass during a brawl, you’re thinking in terms of survivability. Punch this hard to win, get punched this hard to lose. What about when you’re thinking about it at school? Why don’t you break your desk, or the floor, or the stairs?

You don’t know. Your parents might be able to figure it out if you told them, but you don’t. Knowing about you, about what you really are—

_(a freak, a monster, an accident, an anomaly bleeding out energy with every burst of green light you bury into the spiny hides of other monsters, who knows how long until your white rings burn black, if one day you’ll look in the mirror and be no different than Vlad, not because you didn’t try your hardest but because there was never any biological choice, what kind of choice can a species of two even make)_

—would just scare them. It’s easier, keeping them in the dark, even if it means they’re trying to hunt you down and take you apart molecule by molecule any time you’ve got white hair.

But it’s not just flying and invisibility and energy you can summon with a thought—

_(ray or bolt or fire, you don’t know what to call your power, you never really did pay attention when your parents got going even before you had to worry about all their blinking tech going nuts around you, but sometimes your green light is cool and wispy and other times it's hot and sizzling, sometimes you know which one will bloom between your fingers and sometimes it’s a surprise, sometimes it’s almost like your body knows what to do in a fight better than you, sometimes it’s easier to stop thinking and just let it happen, to just be the freak that you are, to burn white-hot and damn the consequences)_

—you have to worry about. You’re stronger every day, _stranger_ everyday too. You feel a little bit more at ease as a ghost as time goes on. It stops being a strain and starts being an ease, even a _comfort,_ and some days you dread the thought of going to school because a ghost might not attack and you’ll be stuck as a human _all day._

That kind of thinking should worry you, probably. 

But so what? You could sneak into your parents’ lab in the middle of the night and try more tests, more experiments, but really, what would that do? You’re a freak, plain and simple. You and Vlad poked your noses in places you shouldn’t have and paid the price, and that’s that. 

Eventually you get sick of worrying and just let it be. You’re a freak who can walk through walls, disappear, and fly. You’re the freak protecting a town full of people who pretty much hate you. Really, what can you do? The same old same old, that’s what. Try and get a little more sleep outside the classroom, maybe. As for the townsfolk? Well, you can’t always avoid the property damages, but you can at least save a few lives along the way.

People even start to say thank you, even if it’s from a distance, even if they think you're some crazed vigilante ghost, and doesn’t that make this whole superhero thing worth it?

But then of course something has to come along and ruin even that much, ruin this budding chance at gratitude, at finally feeling like a real life superhero. And it isn’t a ghost this time. It’s a _human._ You hadn't ever considered humans to be dangerous the way a ghost can be.

 _Freakshow_ happens, and all that hard work is undone in just a few short days. Days you can’t remember with any clarity, just blurs of color and noise, your hands full of stolen money and no matter how hard you tried you couldn’t _let go,_ you couldn’t _stop._ Attacking the cops when they pursued, terrorizing any humans that got too close, puppeted by that grinning, painted maniac who treated you and the other ghosts like animals, like slaves—

_(minions, he’d called you all, and he didn’t even bother to learn your name before he sunk his fingers into your brain, and you never did find out who any of those other ghosts were, what their names were or who they had been before that crystal ball had pulled them under, and they were gone before there was a chance to even ask)_

—and tanked _Invis-o-Bill’s_ reputation to a whole new low. Trashing nearly every car the Amity Park Police Department has and robbing the city blind at the behest of a psychotic ringmaster would have done that even if you’d been considered the hero you try so hard to be. Oh well. At least nobody was hurt in all that, unless you bothered counting Mr. Lancer getting left in the custodial closet for a weekend. You mostly don’t feel guilty about that. Mostly.

Sam says you ought to count _yourself_ too, but you try not to think about any of what happened—

_(all that time spent exhausted and hungry, he never let you rest, not once, because ghosts don’t need sleep, ghosts don’t get tired, ghosts don’t need friends, but it’s over, it’s all over now, you don’t have to hear yourself laugh as the little humans scream below, you’ll never have to watch Sam fall and wonder if your body will listen to you in time, you’re yourself again, you’re in control again, everything’s alright, you’re alright, you’re safe, you’re home, you’re yourself again)_

—and try to pass yourself off as fine afterwards instead, just confused, just tired, just sorry for everything that’s happened.

For weeks after the police shoved Freakshow into the back of a car, your dreams are red. Not with blood, thank god for that. No, it’s like a filter. A stain. Strawberry candy red, saturated fire engine red, the color Sam said your eyes were when you were under his control. It doesn’t matter if you’re having nightmares—

_(more common than you’d like, but you’ve never been one to shout after a bad dream and you don’t intend to start now)_

—or regular old brain dump dreams. It doesn’t matter if you’re dreaming of broken bones and monsters or forgetting to study for a test; it’s all filtered through that darkroom shade of red.

What does it mean? You don’t know. You don’t bring it up to Sam or Tucker. They’d just worry, and they worry about you enough as it is. Besides, you’re fine. The Circus Gothica billboard is up for two weeks after Freakshow’s arrest, and it doesn’t do anything to you, not like before. You don’t lose time, you don’t say anything creepy. Your eyes stay blue or green, depending on whether or not there’s a ghost in need of wrangling nearby.

It’s just a weird, harmless after effect, that’s your best conclusion. Then you do your best to stop thinking about it. Who you were under Freakshow’s control wasn’t _you._ It _wasn’t._ You tell yourself that until you almost believe it. Eventually, you dreams return to their factory settings. Huzzah.

Meanwhile everywhere you go, people badmouth _Invis-o-Bill_ like they’re getting paid to do it. They call him—

_(you)_

—thief and monster and dangerous, they call him—

_(you)_

—a menace and a bad influence on the children. A liar. _Traitor._ Conspiring with other ghosts to earn the trust of humans to terrorize Amity Park all the better. Kids at school spread awful stories about Invis-o-Bill, say he—

_(you)_

—was probably the ghost of a troubled teen who got in too deep with bad people and paid the price, and now he—

_(you)_

—spends his afterlife seeking revenge on humans and ghosts alike. They say a lot of bad things about you, for a while. You try not to pay much attention. You’re getting pretty good at that.

After Freakshow, there’s a lull. That doesn’t mean ghosts don’t stop attacking or causing havoc, it just means that, for a handful of weeks, it’s just the little ones. Hungry animals and disoriented blobs and the Box Ghost. Easy stuff. You actually have time to unwind, time to let the tension bleed from your bones, time to catch up on all your late homework and even squeak your grades up to passable. It’s nice. You’d almost call it relaxing.

Of course, the lulls never last. You know this, you’ve learned this, they made you understand this from your very first—

_(disastrous, embarrassing)_

—fight with the Lunch Lady. You have one fight with Sam the wrong ghost overhears, and everything that’s happened is wished away. _You_ are wished away. For a couple of days, you never walked into your parents’ ghost portal. You were never torn apart and melted back together by heat and light and pain. You were never Phantom at all. Worse still, you have no memory of your erased past, not so much as the slightest disquiet to niggle in the back of your brain when Sam walks up to your locker and starts going on about imaginary monsters like they're _real._

Sam Manson—

_(a stranger, a total stranger, just a bottle-black pretty girl you stare at because you’re fourteen and desperate for a connection you’ve never had and don’t understand, she’s nobody else, she’s nothing else to you but a chance at your first kiss and later you will hate yourself for thinking of her like that, not as a girl because of course she is that, but as a prize you might earn, and who cared if she was crazy because she just might have kissed you for some unfathomable reason, and Sam is so much more than the sum of her body, Sam is worth so much more than that, Sam is worth so much)_

—is the vehement Goth girl who's in half your classes and is [unfinished]

* * *

In those stumbling, halting days of dismissal followed by doubt followed by a desperate curiosity to believe that there might be more to life than growing up and settling for less, that movies haven’t lied and there really is something beyond the disappointment growing up has been for you so far. Sam’s purple mouth is a thin, grim line of—

_(worry, guilt, fear, shame, envy, panic, uncertainty)_

—complicated emotions you can’t parse as you zip up the jumpsuit your parents got you for your birthday. You’ve never worn it before, the fabric stiff and reluctant to bend at your joints. You don’t know how they’re comfortable wearing theirs all the time [unfinished]

* * *

Sometimes after a fight wears you out, leaves you bruised and smeared with shining green, you don’t fight the transformation. Not because you can’t, but because it feels _good_ to have that fake pulse vanish, to hear real blood pounding in your ears. The _weight_ of you shifts too, and even though you’re so much weaker when you’re human, it’s easier to sink your fingers into the dirt, to haul your meat out of the mess your ghost left behind, easier to duck out of sight before the news vans and curious bystanders get too close. Nobody ever sees you. Nobody ever puts your bruises and Band-Aids and the trashed Dunkin’ Donuts together. It helps that nobody’s ever heard of a half-ghost, that Vlad was cunning enough to hide his powers. Everybody’s heard of the Wisconsin Ghost, but Wisconsin is a big damn state and unlike you, Vlad and Plasmius hardly look like the same man.

Everybody at school just thinks you’re the football team’s personal punching bag, which is definitely true. Thing is, after spending a couple months fighting ghosts, a gut-punch from a junior is kind of a _joke._ You’re getting ganged up by a bunch of guys in letter jackets behind the auto shop and you have to mime pain to get them to leave you alone. 

Is this real life? Yup, and it’s _hilarious._

Time passes, as it does. You get stronger, faster, heavier. You hone your powers. You stop losing control, mostly. New ghosts terrorize the streets. Old ghosts do too, they’re just smarter about it. They all know who you are by now. Hell, a whole other plane of reality knows your name by this point, knows who Danny Fenton really is. Funny though, none of them ever spill the beans to any humans. What better way to take down the one person standing in their way of world domination or an army of hypnotized teens or whatever they’re trying to score than to oust his secret identity?

You don’t ask. Maybe they haven’t caught on that humans have no idea you’re trying to keep a secret. Maybe there’s some kind of code among ghosts; don’t spill a guy’s weakness, even if you hate his ectoplasm. Maybe especially if you hate his ectoplasm?

You’ve had a couple more run-ins with Vlad too. Each time he changes, _transforms,_ you breath hitches, because you can almost _see_ it. Whatever makes up the both of you, piecing the mystery together through the differences—

_(light and dark and it’s cliché as anything, it’s so transparently Star Wars, but maybe there’s something to clichés, because you might be the one wearing mostly black but he’s the one with a sucking core, a void, something more horrific for its absence, like he used to be full of stark white light too but it’s all been burned up and whatever’s left is just playing through the motions, pretending at being something else, who knows what it means but you know that it scares the hell out of you)_

—between you and him. He goes on and on about how you’re more like him every day, but he’s wrong. He’s so wrong. You’ll never be like him, and it isn’t just a matter of morals.

What you are, down to the complex disaster of your DNA, is different than what makes up Vlad, and you don’t need to slide a piece of him under a microscope to see that. You thought differently once, but now you know better. A glance is all you need. What you are and what he is, has become—

_(powerful yes, but ugly and hating and cruel, the rings that flash at his waist are just shadows reflecting light, trying to hide a black mouth brimming with hungry teeth)_

—well, you might as well be different species.

Vlad’s crazy and Vlad’s a jerk, but he _is_ right about one thing. There’s so much about the Ghost Zone you don’t understand, and it’s this ignorance that just might get you—

_(or somebody else, and isn’t that an old favorite in the nightmares)_

—killed. You don’t know if it was fate or a simple coincidence that your parents were working on the Ecto-Skeleton when Pariah Dark woke up. You’re fourteen years old and you can shoot lasers out of your fingers; you don’t have the wherewithal for philosophical theology. You’re just glad they got it functioning in time to stop the King of All Ghosts from overrunning the city, even if the stupid thing nearly kills you.

You don’t fret much about the Ecto-Skeleton vanishing after you pass out. You do, however, remember Pariah’s nasty grin—

_(having that much power, it’s a burden, isn’t it child)_

—when you stumbled under the strain. You don’t know if he meant what the suit enabled you to do or if he meant the power in your own two hands. Either way, you _remember_ those words, like they’re branded onto your brain, and you don’t have a choice but to hear it over and over every time you try to sleep. They rang in your head like bells in the days after you’d pushed him back into that sarcophagus, stuck in bed aching and weaker than you’ve ever felt in your _life._

Because it _is_ a burden. Everybody hates and fears you, but at the same time they happily expect you to protect them from hordes of skeletal ghosts. Sometimes you panic, so aware of how young you are, of how little comic books and video games have prepared you for a life like this, hiding bruises and spinning bold-face lies to everybody from your parents to the U.S. government. Teenagers are supposed to rebel, sure, but if you ever come clean you’d be thrown in a cell and they’d never, ever let you go. Not just because you’re a criminal—

_(and you are, thanks to Freakshow and thanks to dozens of ghosts, and you’ve left an imprint of your tiny, impossibly heavy body all over the city, and you’ve done your best to protect everybody but you leave rubble and shrapnel wherever you go, ambulance sirens wail through the streets every day, and everybody’s just as scared as you are, just as fascinated as you are, and yet so many students and teachers have left Casper High, so many faces you used to see everyday in the hallways have vanished, so many business and restaurants and homes sit empty, gathering dust and graffiti, and it’s your fault, if you hadn’t walked into the Ghost Portal none of this would be happening, none of this would ever have happened at all, and you’re too much of a coward to show your face, to tell anyone but your best friends what kind of a monster you really are)_

—but because you can phase through solid objects, you’re considered a monster with less rights than a _dog._

Sometimes you wish Sam wasn’t a budding ghost-rights activist. You’d probably have an easier time studying if she didn’t rattle off all these statistics and news articles, stories of government agents in white suits quarantining whole city blocks to purge the ghosts inhabiting them, of ghost attacks stopping all at once in little towns after strange men with guns and knives and felonies like _grave robbing_ and _murder_ slunk through in the night. Ghosts are dangerous, there’s no questioning that. But so are bears. So are _people._ Just because something is dangerous doesn’t mean it should be destroyed.

Maybe that’s why the ghosts have never spilled your secret. _You’ve_ never tried to kill them. You just want them to leave Amity Park alone. Who knows for sure though? You don’t have the guts to risk asking any of them.

Still, this whole mess is worth it. It _is._ You can _fly,_ for god’s sake. If you’re careful you could juggle minivans, mimic all your favorite action movies and outdo even the craziest Hollywood stunts. What kid hasn’t dreamed of doing any of that? But you’re not being selfish. You’re _not._ It’s like Dad says; you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Progress is a disaster when you’re living it, when it isn’t past tense, when it isn’t all tidied up in a few short paragraphs in a high school history book. What’s happening now is worth it, for the future.

If you ever do tell Mom and Dad—

_(you’re not afraid of what they’ll think, you’ve never worried about that, not really, they’re your parents before they’re scientists, and any experiment or test would be to ensure your safety and your health, because that’s what parents do, that’s what good people do, and they’re the best people you’ve ever known)_

—you know they’d be able to break down your powers into reams of clinical data in no time. They’d figure out how you survived the accident, how your abilities generate and develop in power, maybe even pinpoint the how of your strange, mutable weight. They’d tell you what that light is, when you change, that light that reminds you so strongly of the stars. After all, just because they’re too oblivious to realize their son is the infamous Ghost Kid doesn’t mean they don’t know what they’re _doing._ They aren’t known as the leading scientists, engineers and weapon smiths in the paranatural fields for nothing. Mom’s practically got more letters after her name than there are in the alphabet, and while Dad may only have a fraction of that he _thinks_ like nobody else out there. Most Fenton tech are his designs, wild and absurd and covered with stickers of his beaming face, and Mom’s the one who works out the bugs with fond exasperation.

Still, they have to get their knowledge from somewhere, and you’ve seen what they do down in the lab to the formless, red-eyed ghosts, the ones too weak to do much more than snarl wetly. Sometimes they snare something bigger and stronger, something fond of curling prickly tendrils around the nearest human and _squeezing._ More often than not it’s Dad that’s the unlucky one, always so eager to parse the secrets hidden in each fanged little beastie they’ve fished out of the Ghost Zone. He’s got nearly as many as bruises as you do, some weeks, but he’s never happier than when he’s holding a bag of frozen peas to his head.

After a good wrestle with something that wailed and whistled like a boiling kettle, Dad’ll limp up to the kitchen and settle heavily into a chair, grinning and running his mouth nonstop, talking about how much progress they’ve made today—

_(wait ‘til the boys over at the GIW hear about that one, he’ll say with a bray of laughter, makes the piddly little Class Threes look darn near cuddly, didn’t it Mads, why Danny you should’ve seen the fangs on this fella, nearly bit through the exam table in one bite, y’oughta come down to the lab more often, Danny, seeing these spooks up close and personal’d be a great way to help you get over that silly fear of ‘em, and there you are, smiling meekly and holding up your hands and making up any excuse you can think of off the top of your head to keep you out of the lab when your parents have all their equipment up and humming, just in case, aw Dad I dunno, I’ve got this essay due, not today Dad I’ve got like six pages of algebra I haven’t even started yet, sorry Dad I’m sleeping over at Tucker’s tonight and his mom insisted I come early for dinner)_

—and every time, Mom will smile indulgently, like she’s falling in love with Dad all over again. She’ll push him back into the seat and tell him to quit fidgeting so she can clean up the nasty cut behind his ear, and every time you smile behind your hand and think, how could Vlad ever hope to break your parents up? They only thing they might love more than each other would be you and Jazz and ghosts, and you’re all so much of their lives they can’t help but love you all completely. How they love each other and their kids and the ghosts they’ve studied all their lives, well, that’s like saying they love _breathing._ They love each other because without each other, they wouldn’t be _themselves._ It’s sappy as hell and like any kid you hate seeing your parents get all lovey-dovey, but you can’t help that secret smile as you walk out of the kitchen to give them a little privacy.

Seeing Mom and Dad so hard at work, so _happy_ at work, is why you don’t tell them. They think you’re slacking off, they think you’re getting bullied, and they’re worried about you sure, but better they think their son’s lazy than a _freak._ If they knew what you did, what you could do, if they knew you were the one facing up against ghosts that made the ones _they_ picked apart in their lab look like kittens, if they knew you’d heard all the awful things they want to do to Phantom once they finally nab him—

_(you know they wouldn’t say it if they knew you and him were one and the same, you know you know you know, but sometimes you can’t help but be hurt anyway, to see all that fierce dedication focused on seeing whether or not Danny Phantom has bones, and if he does, how much pressure could they withstand before breaking)_

—they wouldn’t know what to do or say or think. They’d be so eaten up with guilt, why hadn’t they known, why hadn’t they realized, what if they’d finally gotten a lucky shot in, what if one of all those cruel ghosts had gotten a luck shot in, what if what if what if—

_(and you’ve pictured it a hundred times, it’s so easy to imagine the looks on their faces, the horror the shame the fear, and you know they’d love you all the same, you know this like you know the distance between the Sun and every planet, even little Pluto they just declared wasn’t a planet at all, but you’re young and selfish and definitely some kind of stupid because sometimes you can’t help but feel they’d shun you for the freak you are, turn you over to the GIW because they couldn’t bear to look on the thing their son’s become, and you know that couldn’t ever ever ever happen but still, it’s so easy to imagine)_

—and you couldn’t do that to them. You _won’t_ do that to them, no matter how many times Sam or Tucker try to convince you otherwise. How it is now, secrets and lies and detention slips and broken curfews, can’t last forever. You _know_ that. But until then, it’ll have to do, and you’ll have to parse all your growing weirdness without all of Mom and Dad’s knowledge or experience, fingers crossed that their ticking and glowing machines won’t reveal your secret before you’re ready to do it yourself.

* * *

But you’re turning out stranger in ways you can’t even recognize, and for all that Sam and Tucker are by your side to help you as you change and burn brighter and hotter and faster and heavier, they don’t see it either. _Jazz_ is the one who points it out, one day not long after the Spectra… _thing,_ all out of the blue. She’s been noticing lots of things lately, and acting so strange, like she might have pieced it together. But she can’t have, of course not, you’re so careful, you are _always_ so careful. Jazz is just clever, Jazz got all the brains and you got the leftovers. Everybody knows that. Even _you_ know that.

She comes into the kitchen one morning with a curious little spin to her step, craning her head around and around like she’s running late for school and can’t find her keys, but it’s a Saturday. You’re there by the fridge, cobbling together something that might resemble an edible breakfast, moving slow because you’ve got a bruise all down your right side that makes it hurt to do more than breathe shallowly or raise your arm more than a couple inches. You sniff the milk and instantly regret this decision, and while you’re pouring the lumpy mess down the sink Jazz asks if the kitchen’s always been on the second floor.

You stare at her, too tired and baffled to give her the proper _what the hell_ a question like that deserves, but she drags you over to the kitchen door and pushes it open, and since when has there been a door to the kitchen and _oh my god the kitchen is on the second floor._

She gapes at you and you gape right back, and the rest of that morning is spent going over every inch of the house and seeing what else has changed compared to your shared memories.

 _Everything_ has, in some way or another. Doorknobs have shifted, cupboards have lowered, doors moved from one part of a room to another. Even _chairs_ have changed their heights. There’s a whole new door neither of you can remember ever existing before connecting the upstairs bathroom directly to your room. Thinking back—

_(staggering through your open window, mouth thick with the hot penny burn of ectoplasm and blood, your right hand pressed against the throb all down your side, and aren’t you grateful for your weight, your sturdiness, because before you finally peeled the faceguard off of Skulker’s exoskeleton and sucked that little jerk into a Thermos he got a good shot in with a rocket that hit you hard right in the ribs, and if you’d been normal there would have just been a dark wet hole where your torso used to be but lucky you, you’re every inch the creepy little freak Spectra called you, so you get to limp home and clean up as best you can on your own since it’s four in the morning and no way are you gonna wake Sam or Tucker up again, and you have to be quiet, you have to be so quiet, biting down pain, you can’t make a sound or Jazz might hear, grabbing the first-aid kid from your underwear drawer and slipping into the bathroom, and for once the hinges didn’t squeak, thank god, you think, thank god)_

—you hadn’t even noticed last night or even this morning that a door had sprung up where there’d just been NASA and Nat Geo posters before. And your _windows_ have moved, and your _bed_ has moved, and you and Jazz just stare and stare. Why had neither of you noticed any of this until now? Why haven’t your parents? How long has this been going on? 

What could _cause_ something like this?

It takes half an hour to convince your mom that something’s _off_ about the house, and even longer to get your dad to grasp what you both are trying to say. Their eyes just keep glazing over the differences, even something as huge as the kitchen being on the wrong _floor._ Once they finally do see though, it’s a whole other story. After the initial shock, they drop all their experiments and spend the next week measuring and scanning every inch of the house.

Their conclusion, a week and some change later? The Ghost Portal _leaks._

Even with the huge steel door locked up tight, it seems there’s enough residual energy slipping through to warp, literally _warp,_ the house. Somehow. The way your mom’s lips thin as she says all this means she’s not satisfied with this conclusion, but she puts on a wide smile when Jazz asks if you’re all in any danger. A smart question, one you think you might’ve asked yourself. Y’know, if you still needed to worry about something like _exposure._ Your dad just laughs big and loud and says not to worry about it, says if there were going to be any creepy side effects they would have manifested by now. Everything’s fine, they assure you both, but you look at the crease between your mom’s eyebrows and you wonder.

Later, when they’re out taking readings from the ectoplasm-damp wreck you and the Lunch Lady made of a McDonald’s and Jazz is studying at the library, you creep down to the lab and pull up all their documentation of the house. Most of it is dry as dirt; neatly typed spreadsheets and tidy, color-coded graphs (clearly your mom’s handiwork), but there’s also nearly a gigabyte’s worth of photos. Clicking through them, you can see Dad’s sloppy angles and the occasional square pinkie slipping into the frame. Most of the first hundred photos have been untouched, but the two hundreds have been filtered all to hell, like Mom and Dad went through the house a second time, trying to find something the human eye can’t see. Just shy of 300, the photos turn a dusty black and white, splattered in places with an all-too-familiar starkly glowing green.

No. Not splattered. A few spins of the scroll wheel zooms in on a crooked picture of the kitchen. There’s green all over everything; the fridge, the microwave, the drawers and cupboards, cluttered thickly at the kitchen table. These aren’t splatters. They’re _handprints,_ slapped in layers and layers over themselves, like somebody dipped their hands in neon paint and went to town.

Every photo taken in that black and white filter shows the same thing. Handprints on doorknobs and railings, footprints on tile and carpet, green smeared and stamped everywhere, tracking the movements of something—

_(somebody)_

—for what must be as long as the Portal’s been active.

Why didn’t Mom and Dad say anything about this? Why haven’t you sensed it? There’s a ghost, an entity, some _thing_ lurking around your house like it has every right to be there! Green gathered on the couch, on every table and sink, even the upstairs shower and your room and—

( _the_ _pictures of jazz’s room are nearly clean, the pictures of Mom and Dad’s room are spotless, but your room is practically bathed in green from floor to ceiling, your bed and desk nearly washed out by a poisonous haze, and no wonder Mom had looked so worried and no wonder Dad had laughed so loud, they know something’s wrong with you, they’ve always known you were messed up thanks to the accident but now here’s irrefutable proof, how can you lie your way out of photographic evidence, how can they look at you and not see you for the freak you are_ )

—oh.

You close the files, power down the computer, and walk quietly out of the lab. That’s… that’s all you can really do. Sooner or later your parents will knock gently on your door and ask you to come downstairs. _Just a few tests,_ they’ll say. _It’s for your own good,_ they’ll say. _We’re worried about you,_ they’ll say.

But they’ll find out. They’ll find out what you are, and it’ll go one of two ways. They’ll either accept you as the freak you are, or hate you for the freak you are. Either way, there will be no more hiding. It’s… it’s almost a relief, to know the other shoe is finally going to drop.

Except it never does.

You wait, quietly, patiently, expectantly. They don’t treat you any different. They never say a word. When they call you down to the lab, it’s just to show off the latest in Fenton ghost hunting technology. Why? Why don’t they ask? Why don’t they administer tests, if not on you than on the house and the Portal? Why does nothing change?

* * *

They’re wrong on nearly every count, sure, but you’ve got hurts aplenty to hide. Sam and Tucker have seen the lightning splashed across your skin dozens of times by now, and when they hear the A-listers spreading this bad joke of a ghost story and see you laugh, they laugh too. There wasn’t much chance of hiding it for long from them, after all, when it’s so much easier to patch up the nastier cuts when you’re bleeding sluggish ectoplasm instead of blood pumped by a heart full of adrenaline.

The first time Sam had insisted on unzipping your suit to get a good look at the slash on one shoulder, Tucker cracking a half-hearted attempt at a dirty joke with hands shaking so bad the first aid kit rattled like a live thing, they’d both stopped _cold._ For ten long seconds, they just stared, pinning you down with matching expressions of horror. It was the longest ten seconds of your life. You’d been scared before, of being found out for the freak you are, of being overwhelmed by powerful ghosts, but this, you’re pretty sure, was the first time you were ever _terrified._

But then Sam hugged you, and Tucker had smiled and squeezed your good shoulder, and that had been enough. There wasn’t anything to worry about after all.

They understand now why you gasp when your ghost sense goes off—

_(shock like plunging feet first into a frozen lake, shock like drowning with a chest full of dead air, shock like electricity buzzing hot and cold and terrible through your nerves, leaving you breathless and tingling, your fists clenched so tight your knuckles burn white, teeth clenched and grinding as you dart for the nearest lonely corner to gather up your heaviness and summon the starlight in your heart)_

—and they know why it took you so long to realize you don’t have a heartbeat when you’re a ghost. The first few times you changed, you’d felt it, felt it like a rush of blood flow to a sleeping limb, but it took weeks to put it together. To realize the stinging, cool pulse radiating from your hand to your chest wasn’t your heart but something else altogether. All that star-bright scar tissue _pulses._ Involuntary, but without any reaction to how much energy you exert. A constant, steady [unfinished]

* * *

Breathing is optional too, when you’re a ghost. You’d found that one out the hard way, choking on mud in that stupid duck pond and tangled in one of Skulker’s nets.


End file.
